


Botched Jailbreak

by Scrawlers



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 10:39:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8140943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: Ash needs time in the hospital to recuperate from his injuries after the Flare crisis, but he has never been one for sitting still. Unfortunately for him, his nighttime babysitters are ones who have spent over six journeys growing used to his antics, and are not about to let him escape any time soon.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written on August 22nd, long before we knew how the Flare crisis would actually play out, and therefore back when there was still a possibility that Ash (and his team) would sustain injury enough to land them in the hospital/Pokémon Center for a time. Obviously that didn't happen, and so this is a mild canon divergence, but it's one that I hope is still enjoyable nonetheless.

“You listen to me, and you listen to me good, you little twerp,” Jessie snarled, and Ash glowered at her as she jabbed her finger in his direction. “You either get back in that hospital bed this instant or we’ll go steal Pikachu from the Pokémon Center right now!”

“Oh, go ahead and try,” Ash snapped, leaning halfway out of his hospital room window. “It’s not like you’ll be any more successful than you were the last 917 times!”

Jessie’s face contorted in fury, and though she still gripped the edge of the wicker balloon basket in one hand, she raised her other in a fist that couldn’t reach him from where their balloon hovered. “Why you little—!”

“Wait, hold on,” James said. Jessie, Meowth, and Ash turned as one to look at him, and he frowned. “That’s a very specific number. We haven’t actually tried to steal Pikachu that many times, have we?”

“I . . .” Jessie faltered, frowning herself. He brow furrowed, and she looked down at the bottom of the balloon basket. “No, we can’t have. That’s an exaggeration.”

“Because if we’ve tried to steal Pikachu 917 times, that means we’ve _failed_ to steal Pikachu 917 times,” James said. The pitch of his voice rose due to his mounting distress, and Ash took advantage of the distraction to carefully swing one of his legs over the sill of his hospital room window. So long as he moved slowly, they were bound to not notice him. “That means we’ve _disappointed the boss_ 917 times!”

“Wouldn’t we have disappointed the boss more than that since we also failed at other things besides stealing Pikachu?” Meowth asked.

“Meowth, that’s not helping,” Jessie snapped. She sniffed. “And it isn’t true anyway. The twerp was just making up a number. He was exaggerating.”

“But we have been at this a long time,” James said. “It isn’t impossible we’ve tried and failed that many times . . .”

“So you want to think of us as failures, is that it?”

“Of course I don’t! But if we’ve failed 917 times—”

“Then we’ll just succeed on the 918th!”

“Guys,” Meowth interjected.

“I want to believe that,” James said, “I do, but even if we do that won’t change the fact that we—”

“ _Guys_ ,” Meowth said, more loudly this time. 

“There’s no point in being obsessed with the past!” Jessie said. “All we can do is focus on the present and look toward the future where we are the grand, shining heroes of Team Rocket!”

“ _GUYS!”  
_

“ _WHAT_?!” Jessie and James chorused.

Ash glanced up over his shoulder from his position halfway shimmied down the corner of the hospital building to see Meowth’s eyes gleaming in the darkness as he stared down at him, one paw pointed down over the edge of the balloon basket. “He’s gettin’ away!”

“ _What?!_ Oh, that little—!” Jessie’s furious snarling was lost as she dived back into the basket for something, and Ash looked down over his shoulder. He was still halfway up off the ground, but if he jumped from this height he thought he had a chance of making it.

Ash frowned for a second, and then snorted a laugh. A _chance_ at making it? Who was he trying to fool? He had survived way worse than this. This would be a piece of cake.

With no further time to delay, Ash pushed back off the building and jumped, eyes aimed toward the ground so he could make sure he landed at least mostly decently. But what he hadn’t counted on—what he hadn’t even really _thought_ about—was Team Rocket actually succeeding at their job for once. Before he had time to so much as brace himself for impact a large mechanical hand—one of the same ones they had used to temporarily capture Pikachu time and time again—snatched him out of the air, holding him a tight fist as he threw his head back to glare up at the hot air balloon.

“Oh, come on!” he said. 

Team Rocket said nothing as Jessie used a remote control to bring the hand up level with the balloon, just high enough so that they could glower at one another at eye level. Ash fumed from his place inside the giant rubber fist, and Jessie shoved the remote control into Meowth’s chest before she returned Ash’s glare.

“What did I tell you?” she demanded. “Didn’t I tell you to get your annoying, twerpy rat’s nest back in that hospital bed?”

“You’re not my _mom_ , Jessie,” Ash retorted, and after a second added, “And hey, I do not have a rat’s nest!”

“Do you want me to go _get_ your mom?” Jessie said, and she threw her shoulders back to her full height, eyebrows raised. “Because I will. _I know where she lives!”_

Team Rocket had made many threats in all the time Ash had known them, very few of them actually credible, but he still drew back as much as he could from his position in their mechanical hand. “You wouldn’t dare,” he said.

Jessie placed her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed menacingly. “Watch me.”

“Oookay, so how about, instead of getting anyone’s mother, we just put the boy back in his hospital room where he belongs?” James suggested.

“That sounds like a good plan to me,” Meowth said.

“Hmph. Fine. Meowth, send him in.” Jessie waved one hand toward the hospital room, and—using the remote she had pushed on him earlier—Meowth steered the hand in through the window and dropped Ash unceremoniously back onto his bed. Ash scowled as the hand retreated back into the bottom of the basket.

Jessie pointed another accusatory finger at him. “Now this time you stay in there and go to sleep!” she said.

“And maybe, if you’re _real_ good, Pikachu _won’t_ have been stolen by us when you wake up!” Meowth said.

“Nighty-night, twerp!” James said, waving far too cheerfully, in Ash’s opinion, considering the hour and his latest botched escape attempt.

He scowled at them for another second more before he huffed a loud, irritated sigh and flopped back on his bed. The balloon remained hovering outside of the window, and after a moment he called, “Why are you guys even sticking around doing this, anyway? Shouldn’t you be helping _me_ break the rules by escaping? You’re the bad guys!”

“Yeah, that’s true,” James said, leaning against one corner of the basket. Jessie, seeing that Ash had likely given up trying to escape for the night, had reclined back into the opposite corner, and had pulled out a nail file to tend to her nails. “We are the bad guys. But on the other hand, you’re our twerp.”

“Exactly.” Jessie looked up from her nail file and smirked at Ash. “Harassing you is much more fun.”

“Oh, real mature,” Ash groused, and the trio burst into laughter from their basket, but said nothing else. Ash huffed another sigh, and glowered up at the ceiling of his hospital room, his feet on his pillow.

He wouldn’t admit it the next day, but he fell asleep in less than five minutes.


End file.
